Beauty In Small

[selig1656]

#1
003 edited afini by Raymond Friedman, on Flickr
#2
062 edited affini by Raymond Friedman, on Flickr
#3
006 gray by Raymond Friedman, on Flickr

[DanK]

Nice to see more macro here. Nice captures.

My principal suggestion is to close the aperture down. These range from f/4.7 to f/8.0. I would have to play with the capture to see for sure, but I doubt I would have attempted anything wider than f/11. As you get close, depth of field becomes very narrow. You can see that in your photos: the aperture gets wider as you go down the series of three, and the amount of material that is out of focus increases.

One of the most essential steps in any macro work is controlling depth of field, and if you are not focus stacking, that means taking control over aperture. I don't know what "creative program" means with your camera, but if it means that the camera selects aperture, my advice is never to use it in macro work. Instead, set the aperture you need. There are several ways to do this, but a simple one is to use Av mode (or whatever aperture priority is called on your camera) and let the camera select only the shutter speed. If the speed it selects is too slow for hand-holding the camera, then the only options are to use a tripod or increase ISO.

You will often see warnings that if you close the aperture too far, you will begin to see softening of the image from diffraction. However, in macro work, the blurring from shallow depth of field is so severe that it completely swamps the the effect of diffraction, and you will often get a greater appearance of sharpness by closing the aperture down far beyond where diffraction starts. As an example, I'll post an image that I took years ago when I was first teaching myself flower macro photography. I shot it with a cheap Canon Rebel (but a good 60mm macro lens) at f/22. The image has other problems, but you can see that it seems very sharp compared to the ones you posted.

I hope this helps.

[Manfred M]

On top of Dan's excellent advice, I would also suggest you look at the output with a critical eye and do something about distracting elements in the image, that keep the viewer from locking in on your main subject. This issue affects all three of your shots.

Distracting elements are often bright areas in the image or areas of high contrast that compete with your main subject (this occurs in #1 and #3). In #2 there is a related, but similar issue where elements that are close to the edges of the frame that have distracting elements in them:


#!






#2






#3





Those ancient photographic approaches like burning and newer ones line cloning can help a lot.

[selig1656]

Thanks to both of you for the suggestions. Teachable one must remain is a motto in all my aspects of life.

[DanK]

Thanks to both of you for the suggestions. Teachable one must remain is a motto in all my aspects of life.

We are all still learning. That's what makes this forum so valuable.

[Wavelength]

Second image is the best which is wonderful too; the fluorescent green of leaves had a ruining effect on the first image and Manfred dealt with it adeptly!!!